Notorious R.O.B.

Photo: Mick oOo, Flickr

If you’re on the RE.net, then you know that the hottest topic within the community right now is the issue of NAR’s ruling that search engines are no different from scrapers.  Even my post on this blog talking about social media process using just the NAR handling of the issue as an example got enormous traffic and commentary.  I think it’s fair to say that the overwhelming opinion within the RE.net community is one of outrage, anger, and outright rebellion against MIBOR and against NAR.

So it was a surprise when I got an email from a reader who asked for anonymity expressing a contrarian view.  S/he is a REALTOR who actually agrees with MIBOR’s ruling (backed up by NAR) that indexing of IDX listings should be prohibited and MLS members should be forced to block search engines from finding those listings.  I encouraged him/her to post the email as a comment, but got a firm refusal, as s/he was worried (with some justification, I think) about possible negative reaction from the RE.net.

In fact, I ended up chatting with this REALTOR and agreed that instead of posting his/her email, I would just understand his/her point of view then write it up myself.  While I wouldn’t normally bother, the issue is an important one, and the sensitivities are such that I felt it would be helpful to the conversation to present a contrarian opinion without fear of retribution or accusation of bias.

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